“The various tests showed that the Mannlicher-Carcano was an accurate rifle and that the use of a four-power scope was a substantial aid to rapid, accurate firing.” ( Report, pg. 195 )
This is an example of the Commission at its deceiving best. It makes statements of the equipment in general, but not of the CE 139 rifle or its scope in particular. This is because the tests showed that the CE 139 rifle was only accurate when fired from a machine rest. And although a typical 4x power scope was an aid, the 4x power scope on the Depository rifle did NOT enhance its speed or accuracy.
Three tests were done with the CE 139 rifle for speed and accuracy, two by the FBI and one by the US Army. All three tests showed that the rifle was unable to perform at the level of accuracy attributed to it by the Warren Commission.
The FBI rifle tests
“It is a very accurate weapon. The targets we fired showed that”. ( FBI firearms expert Robert Frazier’s testimony in 3 H 411 )
The targets, however, proved exactly the opposite. The first FBI test was done on November 27, 1963. It tested the rifle at distances 15 and 25 yards because, according to testimony from one of its firearms experts, Robert Frazier, the facility to test rifle at long range was not available.
The tests were conducted for speed and accuracy. ( 3 H 402 )
Three FBI experts fired three rounds from the rifle at 15 yards. Cortlandt Cunningham completed the sequence in 7 seconds, Robert Frazier in 6 seconds and Charles Killion in 9 seconds.
As you can see from these targets, Cunningham’s 3 shots were 4 inches high and 1 inch to the right of the “aiming point” ( arrow ). Frazier’s 3 shots were the same as Cunningham’s, 4 inches high and 1 inch to the right. Killion’s 3 hits were 2 1/2 inches high and 1 inch to the right. ( 3 H 403 – 404 )
Frazier was the only participant in the test at 25 yards. Unlike the 15 yard test, where the shooters got to fire one set of three shots, Frazier fired two sets of three shots.
In his first set, he fired three rounds in 4.8 seconds, but his shots were 4 inches high and 1 to 2 inches to the right, same as it was at 15 yards. ( 3 H 404 )
In his second set, he fired three rounds in 4.6 seconds, but 1 shot was an inch high and the other two were 4-5 inches high. ( ibid. )
The short distance tests showed that, even with the scope, the rifle missed the aiming point by almost a half of a foot.
It wasn’t until almost 4 months later, on March 16, 1964, that the FBI was able to test the rifle at long range. This test was conducted with a target at 100 yards and the only shooter once again was Robert Frazier.
I refer to this test as the second FBI test because it wasn’t done at the same time and date as the short distance test.
In this test, Frazier fired four sets of 3 shots.
For his first set, he fired the three shots in 5.9 seconds, but was 5 inches too high.
In the second set, he fired the shots in 6.2 seconds, but was 4 inches high and 3-4 inches to the right.
For his third set, he fired the shots in 5.6 seconds, but he was 2 1/2 inches high and 2 inches to the right.
In his final set, he fired the three rounds in 6.5 seconds, but was 5 inches high and 5 inches to the right. ( 3 H 405 )
The long distance test conducted by the FBI proved that the further the target, the more a shooter missed what he was aiming at. What was a 2 1/2 to 4 inch miss at 15 yards, was a 4-5 inch miss at 100 yards.
In total, 3 FBI agents took 9 attempts and fired 27 rounds from the CE 139 rifle. Of those 9 attempts, 6 were slower than the Commission’s timeframe of 5.6 seconds. And not one round of the 27 hit where they were aiming at.
The results of the FBI tests proved that the rifle was NOT “very accurate” and that Frazier lied under oath when he testified that the tests showed that it was.
Undaunted by the results of the FBI’s tests, the Commission did what it usually did when the FBI’s evidence did not give it the results it desired: it turned to a second opinion.
In this case, it turned to the US Army.
The Army rifle tests
Because the FBI’s tests had proven that the CE 139 rifle was inaccurate weapon, the Commission needed results proving otherwise. For that it turned to the US Army’s weapons testing facility at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds.
The man who supervised the testing was Ronald Simmons, Chief of the Weapons Evaluation Branch of the Ballistics Research Laboratory of the Department of the Army.
For the sake of being brief, I’ll refer to these as the “army tests”.
The Army’s testing of the CE 139 rifle was done on March 27, 1964, eleven days after the FBI tests showed that the rifle could not have committed the crime.
The first test they did was a dispersion test. This is a test to measure the distance between or the “spread” of bullets fired at a target. To minimize the dispersion or “spread” of the bullets, the testers used a “machine rest”. ( 3 H 443 )
It was under these conditions, firing the rifle in a machine rest, that Simmons called the CE 139 rifle, “quite accurate” ( ibid. ), something the Commission quoted in its Report ( pg. 194 ), but failed to reveal under what circumstances the comment was made. It’s hard to image any rifle not being accurate when set up in a rig like that.
In fact, when comparing the accuracy of the rifle in a machine rest with its accuracy in the hands of a master rifleman, the rifle was anything but accurate. In the hands of master riflemen, the dispersion of the bullets on the targets of 240 and 270 ft show a wide spread. ( grey circle , below )
Not only was the dispersion wide on the second and third targets , almost half of those shots missed the target. These results were in spite of the Army making sure its shooters had advantages that a shooter from the sixth floor did not have.
Advantage # 1 : Skill level
For its test, the Commission used three riflemen rated as Master ( the highest rating ) by the National Rifle Association. These were not men who grab a rifle and take pictures in their backyard, making believe they’re something they’re not. These guys were the real deal. Two were civilians employed by the US Army as gunners and the third was on active duty. ( 3 H 445 )
And their skill level was far superior to Oswald’s. In addition to being rated as Master riflemen, all three had experience in national shooting match competitions sponsored by the NRA. ( 3 H 450 )
In comparison, they were major league and Oswald was bush league.
On May 6, 1959, Oswald participated in a his final Marine Corps rifle qualification test. In that test, he qualified “marksman” with a low reading of 191. The bare minimum to qualify was 190. ( red boxes below )
Lt. Col. A.G. Folsom Jr. Head of the Records Bureau of the Marine Corps., reported to the Commission that, “a low marksman qualification indicates a rather poor shot“. Lt. Col. Folsom’s understanding of Oswald’s rating was verified by Sgt. Nelson Delgado, Oswald’s Sergeant who, in a 1966 interview with Attorney Mark Lane, described how poor a shot Oswald really was.
Skill advantage: riflemen
Advantage # 2: Firing at stationary targets
Another advantage the Commission’s shooters had was that they were firing at stationary targets placed at 175, 240 and 270 ft. rather than at a moving target. ( 3 H 444 ) Simmons told the Commission that in his opinion, the moving of the target would have no effect on the accuracy of fire because Kennedy was moving away from the rifle and was “exposed to the rifleman at all times”. ( 3 H 450 )
But this is not true. Anyone who has fired a rifle before knows that shooting at a moving target requires establishing a “lead”. You must keep the gun moving with the target, in the same direction but in front of it, maintaining your “lead” as the target moves and then pull the trigger while you’re continuing to move the rifle.
This is called follow-through and it’s necessary to hitting a moving target. If you stop the rifle and lose that lead, you will miss. This is a special skill that you can’t learn from shooting at stationary targets in competitive events.
A target moving away from you would normally require a “lead” above it, not below it. A rifle firing as much as 5 inches high and 5 inches to the right would have required the shooter using it to aim his crosshairs just above Kennedy’s left shoulder in order to hit his head. Even the FBI’s Frazier testified that shooting at a moving target “would have slowed down the shooting” depending on how fast the target was moving. ( 3 H 407 )
We will never know what skills these riflemen had at shooting at moving targets. The fact remains that shooting at a stationary target gives a shooter an advantage in speed by not having to reacquire the target and the “lead” between shots.
Speed advantage: riflemen
Advantage # 3: Time of the first shot
The Commission concluded that because of the leaves on the tree outside the TSBD, the gunman’s view from the sixth floor was obstructed until Zapruder frame 210. ( Report, pg. 105 ) Kennedy’s reaction is apparent at Z225, some 15 frames or 0.8 seconds after he emerges from behind the tree. This means that a gunman firing from the sixth floor had only .8 seconds to aim, lead the target and fire the first shot.
But the riflemen in the Commission’s test were allowed to take as much time as they pleased aiming at the first target. ( 3 H 445 )
This advantage would be for accuracy. The shooter takes his time aiming for the first shot, when it’s fired he can see where it hits and make an adjustment in his aim for the subsequent shots. And the first shot will always be the most accurate.
Accuracy advantage: riflemen
Advantage # 4: Familiarity with rifle
Three riflemen were given two attempts each with the CE139 rifle. In total, 6 attempts were made and 18 shots were fired. In addition, the shooters were allowed 2-3 minutes each to work the stiff bolt back and forth before firing. There is no evidence that Oswald fired the rifle before November 22, 1963 and on that date, he allegedly only got one attempt of 3 shots.
Familiarity advantage: riflemen
Advantage # 5: Firing from a lower height
While a shooter firing from the sixth floor would have been firing from a height of 60 feet, the Commission’s shooters fired from a height of only 30 feet.
Lowering the height from which the rifleman fires shortens the distance the bullet has to travel to the target. Looking at this triangle, where 60 is the height of the 6th floor in feet and 240 is the distance of the head shot, we get a distance of 247.39 feet the bullet has to travel.
But at a height of 30 feet, that distance comes down to 241.87. Not a big difference, but a difference nonetheless. And any shortage in distance is an advantage in time.
Timing advantage: riflemen
The test results
In spite of all the advantages the shooters had in this test, riflemen Staley and Hendrix were unable to complete the three-shot sequence in less than 6 seconds. Staley’s best was 6.45, Hendrix’s was 7 seconds flat. ( 3 H 446 )
Since their times were not less than 5.6 seconds the Warren Commission concluded was the firing sequence, I’ll avoid critiquing their accuracy. Suffice it to say that they could not duplicate Oswald’s alleged performance.
However, the third rifleman, Miller, was able to fire three shots within the Commission’s 5.6 timeframe, albeit his accuracy was way off.
In his first attempt, Miller was able to fire three rounds in 4.6 seconds and his second attempt, 5.15. But he missed the target completely on his second shot on both attempts. This is what his scorecard looked like:
Miller was the best for speed, but he missed the “target” completely twice and nearly missed it on his last shot. As a result, Miller’s performance, while as fast as or faster than that of the Commission’s lone gunman, could not match his alleged accuracy.
And for accuracy, we need to look no further than the scope.
The defective scope
When the FBI fired the rifle in November of 1963, it found that the shots were all high and to the right from the aiming point. But because the shots were so closely grouped together, it never occurred to the FBI experts to try to sight the rifle in.
When they did the long distance test at Quantico, they DID try to sight the rifle in and found that adjusting the windage ( horizontal adjustment ) turret moved the elevation ( vertical ) adjustment as well. ( 3 H 405 )
This made the scope impossible to sight in and the FBI was left with sighting in the rifle “approximately”. They test fired the rifle and found that “the shots were not landing in the same place, but were gradually moving away from the point of impact”. ( ibid. )
Frazier was unable to tell the Commission exactly when this defect occurred but the fact that the rifle was firing high and to the right when the Bureau fired it for the first time indicates it was damaged prior to the November 27th testing.
Frazier testified that this defect could be compensated for by merely aiming the crosshairs low and to the left ( 3 H 407 ). This would be possible with a rifle that consistantly missed to the same spot, as the rifle had at 15 yards.
But the rifle tests exposed the fact that, even as close as 25 yards, the misses from the CE 139 rifle were different from shot to shot. It would miss by 2 inches on one shot, then 5 inches on the next.
As anyone familiar with shooting rifles will tell you, it is impossible to compensate your aim when your weapon is so erratic that you don’t know where the bullet is going to hit.
When Ronald Simmons testified before the Warren Commission, he made no mention that the windage adjustment was interferring with the elevation adjustment. He admitted that his people could not sight the rifle in and introduced two shims, one for the elevation and one for the azimuth ( windage ). ( 3 H 443 )
As it turned out, the shims were not an advantage, especially after 58.3 yards ( 175 ft ). The shims appeared to make the shots miss low and to the left. The second and third targets ( 240 and 270 ft, respectively ) showed a wide dispersion and 5 of the 12 shots missed the target completely.
The Commission’s expert on the performance of the scope was Marine Master Sergeant James Zahm, the NCO who was in charge of the Marksmanship Training Armory at the Marine Corps Training School, who told the Commission that the use of a 4x power scope was “an extreme aid” in hitting a target. ( 11 H 307 )
His opinions on the scope were based on the performance of a typical 4x power scope in the hands of a Marine qualified sharpshooter. His opinion of Oswald’s skill came from Commission Exhibit 239, Oswald’s score book from 1956, when he qualified as a sharpshooter with a score of 212.
Zahm was never shown the targets fired at by the FBI and Army and asked to give an opinion of that scope’s accuracy. In addition, Zahm was never given the opportunity to fire the CE 139 rifle or to even try to sight in the scope.
Because his testimony was not specific to the scope mounted on the Depository rifle, any opinion he expresssed in regard to Oswald’s ability to commit the crime is worthless.
But his wasn’t the only worthless opinion.
Oswald an “excellent shot”
Another “expert” the Commission called on was Major Eugene D. Anderson, assistant head of the Marksmanship Branch at Marine Corps Headquaters in Washington D.C.. Maj. Anderson was asked to give an opinion of Oswald’s skill with a rifle. Maj. Anderson’s opinion was based on paperwork. He had never spent time on a firing range with Oswald, as Sgt. Delgado had.
One of the records he based his opinion on was the same score book ( CE 239 ) Zahm used from Oswald’s Qualification as a Sharpshooter in December 1956. It was Oswald’s qualification score of 212 in 1956 that made Oswald “an excellent shot.”
Anderson tried to excuse Oswald’s de-rating to marksman in 1959 by blaming it on possibilities: everything from the weapon he used to the weather.
When you’re issued a rifle in the service, that’s your weapon for your duration. It doesn’t change.
So I looked back at the weather records for Irvine, California, the town near the El Toro Marine Air Station for the day of May 6, 1959, when Oswald took his last qualification test.
The average temperature was 69.1 that day. No precipitation, winds at 6.9 mph with gusts up to just under 15 mph. In other words, just a nice day in May.
https://www.almanac.com/weather/history/CA/Irvine/1959-05-06
The evidence indicates that the weather played no role in his scoring a low marksman score. It also indicates that the Commission’s “expert” on Oswald’s skill, Maj. Anderson, was a “paper pusher” who had no clue what he was talking about.
The media circus
Over the years, the mainstream media has taken the position as defender of our public institutions rather than the seeker of truth. In that position, it has gone to great lengths to defend the conclusions of the Warren Commission.
One of those defenses came in the form of a 1967 rifle test by CBS as part of their 4 part televised program : A CBS News Inquiry– The Warren Report. Originally televised as one hour parts over the four nights of June 25-28, 1967, the program sought to “explore glaring omissions in the tests fired for the Commission”.
Among those “omissions” were the height of the tower and the firing at stationary targets. CBS sought to rectify that by having its shooters fire from a 60 foot tower at a moving target. This is their segment on the rifle tests:
What CBS didn’t tell its viewers is that of the 60 shots fired in those 20 attempts, 35 missed the target. When compared to Oswald’s alleged accuracy of 2 out of 3 or 66.7%, that’s only a 41.7 % of shots that hit the target.
CBS avoided mentioning the specifics and instead called it, “reasonable accuracy”.
Any conclusions CBS came to regarding the CE 139 rifle was invalidated by the fact that their shooters did not fire it.
But CBS’s test was not the most ridiculous of all.
On November 20, 2003, ABC televised “The Kennedy Assassination–Beyond Conspiracy”. In this program, Warren Commission supporter Dr. John K. Lattimer dry fired a rifle ( not CE 139 ) in order to “prove” that Oswald could get three shots off in less than 8.5 seconds.
The new 8.5 second standard was derived from Gerald Posner’s book “Case Closed” where Posner concluded that the first shot was fired at Zapruder frame 162, when a little girl, while running after the President’s limo, suddenly stops and looks back. Posner claimed that she is reacting to the sound of the first gunshot.
When you can’t get the ball through the goalposts, you just move the goalposts.
This is that segment :
Epilogue
The FBI targets in particular show where the shooters were aiming at and where the bullets hit. Robert Frazier’s own testimony was that even at 15 yards, the rifle fired 2 1/2 to 4 inches high from where they aimed it. ( 3 H 404 ) At 25 yards, it was 4-5 inches high. At 100 yards, it was 2 1/2 to 5 inches high. The FBI could not sight the rifle in using the scope.
An accurate weapon hits where you aim it.
The Army installed shims to try to sight the rifle in. They couldn’t.
The Commission used riflemen with superior skills firing at stationary targets. They were able to take as long as they wanted for the first shot, even though a shooter from the sixth floor would have only .8 seconds to fire the first shot.
They got more attempts and more shots ( the FBI’s Frazier got 7 attempts and 21 shots ) than was attributed to Oswald. And they fired from a tower that was lower than the sixth floor, shortening the distance the bullet had to travel to the target.
In spite of all of these advantages, advantages that Oswald did not have, between the FBI and the Army, six gunmen took 15 attempts and fired 45 shots from the CE 139 rifle and failed in every attempt to hit what they aimed at.
And there is no evidence that Oswald was any more proficient in the operation of this weapon than they were. In fact, there’s no evidence that Oswald fired as many or more shots through this weapon than Robert Frazier did. And Frazier never hit what he aimed at.
Which brings us to the defective scope. The evidence indicates that the scope was defective on November 27, when the FBI first tested the rifle and it fired high and to the right. No evidence exists to show that the scope was damaged in the period between the assassination and the FBI test of it on November 27th.
Absent that evidence, we must assume that the condition of the scope when received by the FBI was the same condition it was in at the time of the assassination. The scope was defective as it would not allow you to sight the rifle in. The FBI couldn’t sight it in and the Army couldn’t sight it in.
The Commission’s “experts” declared hitting the President in the head “an easy shot” with a rifle and 4x power scope. But the Army’s three master riflemen took 18 shots from the CE 139 rifle using the scope and failed to hit the target in the head area. In addition, the Commission’s “experts” never fired the CE 139 rifle nor were they ever shown the targets from the test results and asked to comment on those.
In spite of the Commission’s master riflemen failing to hit the target in the head area with 18 shots, the official version has Oswald hitting Kennedy in the head with only his third shot.
Finally, every test the Commission had performed, from the wounds/ballistics testing to the testing of the rifle for speed and accuracy, proved that the official version was a lie. The rifle tests proved that the CE 139 rifle, with its defective scope, was not accurate enough to be the murder weapon that killed President Kennedy. When you factor in Oswald’s poor shooting skills and lack of practice with the rifle, it was impossible.
The Commission’s contention that the use of a four-power scope was “a substantial aid to rapid, accurate firing” may have been true for the typical 4x power scope, but not this one. The fact is that the use of this four power scope made it impossible to hit anything in your crosshairs. And the rifle/scope combination was so erratic from shot-to-shot, that it was impossible for anyone to have compensated for error.
The rifle tests proved that.
With regard to the CE 139 rifle, CBS’ test proved nothing because they fired a different rifle. In addition, while CBS advised its viewers that the average time of their shooters for firing three shots was 5.6 seconds, it failed to advise them that their shooters missed the target at an average of almost 2 out of 3 shots. It also failed to tell its viewers that its shooters as a group missed 35 of 60 shots or 58.3 % of the shots they took.
ABC’s demonstration was even more ridiculous because not only did Dr. Lattimer not use the Depository rifle, he didn’t even fire the rifle he used. All he did was cycle the bolt and pull the trigger and he couldn’t even do that in 5.6 seconds.
These are only two examples of how the mainstream media over the years has used deception to support the Warren Commission’s conclusions. From extending the shooting sequence, to firing different weapons to not firing a weapon at all, the mainstream media has done its part in lulling to sleep an uninformed world of the fraudulent case against Oswald. And the subsequent coverup of the truth.
In the Old West, killing a man who is unarmed, in the back, was by all standards a cowardly act. It is no less in this murder, a murder where justice has not been served.
But as long as there are voices in the wilderness brave enough to call out these masters of deception, we can be hopeful that this type of murderous treachery will never again find its way into our history.